OK, I suppose lack of seniors is a legitimate constraint.

Still, interviewing is so important, that I typically give it a high priority. Even when I had only one other senior engineer, I made sure each candidate spent a long time with each of us.

Typically, I'd go in with a junior developer, and he'd go in with some other junior developer. I'd even see the same candidate twice rather than have two juniors interview him.

I've been on the other side of that kind of interview and I know how badly it can get messed up.

> Coding questions feel objective, and programmers love to pretend they’re objective, but like any other human evaluation process, they’re subjective.

I don't see a reason to swear, as this is a friendly discussion. Either way, we'll have to agree to disagree.

Coding questions ideally yield an answer that can compile and run and return correct output for at least some valid sets of input. That's about as objective as it gets.

This topic was pretty lively last time I commented about my interviewing practices. Coding is a creative effort -- yes. It's not objective.

But I see no other way to test if the person is competent than sitting them down with a problem to solve -- if only to have them explain what they do and don't understand, and what their process is.

> Coding questions feel objective, and programmers love to pretend they’re objective, but like any other human evaluation process, they’re subjective. It’s not like you automatically get the job if you get the answer right.

> Unless you’re verifying that your team is generating consistent, reproducible outcomes, I can pretty much guarantee that they’re not.

It seems as though there are a fair number of things like this, where people sort-of play act science but don’t bother with the rigor. I guess it’s a type of cargo culting.